The Last Pathfinder's Journal

I hope we'll still be getting the remaining fiction compiled as epubs, as well as the still missing webfiction compilations.

I always enjoyed the fiction.

I much prefer having the short fiction (web fiction and AP fiction) to Pathfinder Tales because it was a different scale of fiction that was fun to read in an evening.

The Tales line occupies a different headspace.

I would totally subscribe to a PF monthly/weekly short fiction line, even if it was online or pdf only (the kind of thing I see on some Patreon things).

I agree on all counts. That would be a nice subscription.

End of era indeed. Sad to see them go but I understand the reason. Is there any news on the last journey, who is writing it and all that?

I think Eando Kline should have his own Pathfinder Tales adventure. he kinda deserves it.

GeraintElberion wrote:

I always enjoyed the fiction.

I much prefer having the short fiction (web fiction and AP fiction) to Pathfinder Tales because it was a different scale of fiction that was fun to read in an evening.

The Tales line occupies a different headspace.

I would totally subscribe to a PF monthly/weekly short fiction line, even if it was online or pdf only (the kind of thing I see on some Patreon things).

I agree on all counts. That would be a nice subscription.

Also agreed!

As a newer subscriber to the AP line, I think this is a great decision. To me it felt unfocused to just have an unrelated short story pop up after the module - for the first AP I bought I thought the novel would be a dramatization of the module, which I think would had been useful, but when it wasn't I started to wonder what was I buying. A Pathfinder adventure line, or some sort of expensive magazine with a bit of a split personality? The fiction I read weren't even set in the same place as the adventure was, so I couldn't really find any use for them in running the adventure.

I love the Pathfinder Tales novels I have bought, and I think that that is a much better place for this content and purpose. I understand that especially for the subscribers from the Dungeon/Dragon-days this is a sad day, but for me, as relatively new blood, this decision really straightens out a big question mark I had.

Loved the AP fiction, and found it very useful. But I also understand the sentiment on the other side, and can appreciate having additional adventure material.

Great job, James!

I personally will miss them. I think they helped set the tone for the APs. I know that I read them and pulled things from them. While the Pathfinder Tales are great, I enjoyed the short stories. Please put some thought into releasing short story collections, maybe Pathfinder Tales books that cover certain regions of Golarion with short stories :)

I loved the AP fiction, particularly the approach in Mummy's Mask that showed the area around the adventure through different eyes. But, at the end of the day, I'll probably get a lot of mileage out of more backmatter, adventure text, and monsters as well.

So, it's probably the right call, just a little bittersweet.

Cheers!
Landon

The death of short fiction is never good. Web based or in print. However, if it is replaced with things like expanded geography of the lands in the APs, that will be enjoyed.

I'm happy this era is over as I was never interested in the fiction and making space for more game content is great. But I'm also said for those who will miss it.

So no new short-fiction on the web site or in the journals? They were a great way to let Golarion breathe in a shorter format than a full novel.

I'd love if some sort of subscription went into effect. Not every story has to be big to give a sense of the world.

Sorry, the web fiction was got me into buying campaign setting updates, so this is a big hit.

I personally will miss them. I think they helped set the tone for the APs. I know that I read them and pulled things from them. While the Pathfinder Tales are great, I enjoyed the short stories. Please put some thought into releasing short story collections, maybe Pathfinder Tales books that cover certain regions of Golarion with short stories :)

Including some anthologies of short stories in the PF Tales line is a good idea, I think.

The journal debate is dead—long live the journal debate! :P

Seriously, though: Thanks for the feedback, everyone! The idea of doing a short story collection or some sort of short story subscription (like a paid version of the web fiction) is deeply appealing to me as a creator, but so far we've shied away from it because the sales numbers on short story collections are pretty dismal compared to novels. Ditto for short fiction in other formats—the web fiction, while beloved by some, just didn't generate enough buzz by the end to justify the opportunity cost in addition to the *actual* cost. Each web fiction blog cost the company around $500, and even more importantly took some of our top editors away from working on the products that were *making* the company money. As with other discontinued projects like Planet Stories, we kept it going as long as we could out of love for the art form, but in the end, we had to do the responsible thing.

That said, it's really nice to hear from people who appreciate short fiction, and who knows? If the demand is there, perhaps it could return in a new and improved form someday...

I have to say how incredibly lucky I feel that I was able to participate in the last round of Pathfinder's Journals. I was a fan of them since the beginning (long before I started working at Paizo), and I always daydreamed of being able to write one.

And then I did! Yay! *flailing Muppet arms*

Thanks to everyone who wrote, developed, and edited the fiction over the years!

An end of an era! Thank you for honoring it with this cool blog post instead of silently sweeping it away. I too remember Eric Mona's first overview article and didn't fully appreciate at the time how significantly it would impact our game for years to come.

For some of us, Eando Kline is our Han Solo. I don't collect minis, but I had to get the Eando Kline mini. He stays in his fancy package.

Also "Hand of the Handless", the story mentioned in the blog, brought us trolls-that-read-portents-in-their-regenerating-guts. Even today that still stands up as one of the most twisted awesome things in all of Pathfinder.

...And over the years it's become a pretty big field of twisted awesome.

Really really sorry about this.
I love reading, but sometimes a short story is just the right amount of pages you can manage, and PJ were my favourite spot to find just that many pages.
Glad to hear there'll be more pages for adventures and backstory articles tough.

Wow, like others have said, this really is the end of an era. I loved the fiction, no matter how varying in quality it has been. There was this one story, I'm pretty sure it's in Rise of the Runelords, but it could have been CotCT, where Eando meets these orcs, and something happens to make the orcs laugh and call out this word. Eando asks his guide what the word means, and it's basically apocalypse. And Eando just has this moment where he realizes that A) the orcs think the world is ending and B) they're laughing about it.

It was just such a tiny bit, but it's stuck with me for a decade now. Pathfinder will have to work overtime to keep me into the AP line. There's no way I'll ever be able to play all of the adventures, and some of the paths just haven't been as evocative as of late...the fiction and the bestiary were the two sections that I flipped to first. (Unless there was a demon prince/archdevil/SKR-god writeup.) And now that's half gone. It does feel a bit like a friend is moving far away.

While I understand the appeal of the stories to some, and symphathize with the people who will miss them...
This is the best news I've heard in months, and will probably singlehandedly make me buy Ironfang Invasion, and likely more of the following AP's.

Also, I know it's a bit early to talk about now, but will Starfinder AP's have fiction?

I always found having a few pages of fiction in an RPG adventure annoying. It has been wasted pages in every AP I have bought as I have read few if any of them, I buy enough fiction to keep me busy reading without having it added to a product I am buying for another reason. I will be happy if a short fiction line appears and is commercially viable for those who are interested

I'm in the 'Going to miss it... but if you're replacing it with something better than I'm kind of okay with it' club... but, right now, I don't actually know what is replacing the fiction and that makes it difficult for me to know whether I am more happy face than I am sad face. I will admit that I would never read the fiction until I had all six parts of an AP in my hand and then I would just binge read them (in so much as 30-ish pages of content could be called 'binge')... and I do think it added a little bit of flavour to each AP in which they were embedded.

However, having said all that, there is enough feedback on this thread to suggest that the fiction was poor value for some folks... and therefore, when we come to future health of the AP line, it's difficult to see this as anything other then the 'right' decision.

I am in the boat of never really reading the short fiction...one of these days I will...so I am not going to miss them. Though a yearly anthology would be awesome.

Does this mean with the extra space we might see the APS going to higher levels?

Also, I know it's a bit early to talk about now, but will Starfinder AP's have fiction?

How cool would it be if Eando Kline were placed in stasis and revived in Starfinder, appearing in a module or something. Perhaps as a pregen or an NPC.

I mean there is such a spell, right?

Blackfingers wrote:

Also, I know it's a bit early to talk about now, but will Starfinder AP's have fiction?

How cool would it be if Eando Kline were placed in stasis and revived in Starfinder, appearing in a module or something. Perhaps as a pregen or an NPC.

I mean there is such a spell, right?

Spell? Bah!

We can rebuild him.
We have the technology.
We can make him better than he was.

Honestly, the fiction was the first thing I read in each volume. I skipped right past the AP to avoid spoiling it for whenever I got to play it. Finding out what happened next in the fiction was a huge draw for the first couple years.

I have every single AP volume, but I've never once considered reading the fiction. It just wasn't what I'd bought the volume for.

Ask a Shoanti wrote:

Blackfingers wrote:

Also, I know it's a bit early to talk about now, but will Starfinder AP's have fiction?

How cool would it be if Eando Kline were placed in stasis and revived in Starfinder, appearing in a module or something. Perhaps as a pregen or an NPC.

I mean there is such a spell, right?

Spell? Bah!

We can rebuild him.
We have the technology.
We can make him better than he was.

He's the AI deity that brought FTL travel.

thunderspirit wrote:

Ask a Shoanti wrote:

Blackfingers wrote:

Also, I know it's a bit early to talk about now, but will Starfinder AP's have fiction?

How cool would it be if Eando Kline were placed in stasis and revived in Starfinder, appearing in a module or something. Perhaps as a pregen or an NPC.

I mean there is such a spell, right?

Spell? Bah!

We can rebuild him.
We have the technology.
We can make him better than he was.

He's the AI deity that brought FTL travel.

Ean-DOS Endline?

Also, I know it's a bit early to talk about now, but will Starfinder AP's have fiction?

We're not planning to do any fiction in the Starfinder Adventure Path—since it's the start of a whole new game, we need all the backmatter space we can get for new setting and rules info! That said, I can pretty much promise you'll see some fiction-like things popping up elsewhere...

We're not planning to do any fiction in the Starfinder Adventure Path—since it's the start of a whole new game, we need all the backmatter space we can get for new setting and rules info! That said, I can pretty much promise you'll see some fiction-like things popping up elsewhere...

OOooooOOOOOooooo. That's one exciting implication :)

Ah sad, I was reading the replies to Liz's goodbye thread and only then saw it mentioned that the Pathfinder's Journal was being discontinued. It was what got me hooked on Golarion more than anything else, and it's the reason I started running Serpent's Skull last year. I'll always feel a little excitement when I flip through a book and see Eando Kline's journal entries.